Doll
by shi-chan
Summary: Iruka on a mission where he is sold and trained to cater to high class customers - this is his first service. And it's a reminder of what shame a shinobi is forced to bear.


Notes: Initially written as a writing sample for the LJRP game Guys & Dolls. I was reading it while clearing out my HD and figured oh, might as well tweak it into something.

**DOLL**

Iruka is not sure what to make of the fact that he is being assisted in getting the obi tied right and that an equally patterned hakama is being eased on to his shoulder. A dark red yukata, with white camellias printed at the bottom and a checkered obi, black hakama with cranes and camellia buds to go with it, black zouris to top it all off along with a white hair tie. His hair, they said is to be done up in a half ponytail, because his buyers tonight has asked for a performance and they want it _pretty._ So pretty in fact that apparently, Iruka isn't going to be alone. There is going to be someone with him and he isn't even going to be sucking someone's cock or kissing someone's wet pussy.

No, his first job, his first task is to fuck another fellow victim in this entire mess. Another person apparently sold.

(You're still trying to get over that, the idea of getting sold, the idea of leaving your old self behind and emerging as someone else once you've stepped a foot past Konoha's gates - your first assignment in a while now that summer has come and the Academy is closed for the break. You are never good - never have been - at dividing your mind in half, where one is human and the other is not, the latter being you seeing yourself as a tool, an object to be used in even the most humanly degrading manner.

Like being sold and bought. Like a pound of flesh up for display, garnished.

Beautiful.

_Ripe._ )

But Iruka waits patiently once he's ready, shifting a little bit at the lack of a fundoshi under all the fabrics that makes him feel like a porcelain doll, waiting to be told to come out. Waiting like a prisoner and trying to ward the itch on his back from where he had been whipped a week ago, all part of the cover, all part of iselling/i a cover, all part of the ijob/i. Whipped and now the scabs has peeled and healed, white lines crossing his back, like a sea of thorns. He bites the urge to reach back and scratch the bit under his right shoulder-blade, where the tip of the whip had licked him several times and where it is the most raw, all because he had tried to _speak._ To ask for not even a full cup of _water_. To see if these people are capable of _compassion._ If some of these captors are _worth something._

(Because even the most cruel, the coldest, the seemingly inhumane are redeemable. Humans are strange creatures like that, seemingly able to show compassion as thin as a hairline. Iruka believes in this, has to believe. Someone whose life is dedicated in teaching prepubescent children where to strike for a quick kill and how to hold a blade or how to turn their surrounding into a weapon has to believe that while one is shaping monsters, they are still human. That these vessels that are really just tools at the end of the day are not just pounds of flesh to be used and discarded, forgotten, even if their names are etched in stone later.

It's the truth.

It's also the greatest lie.)

It makes him seethe, makes him want to set the entire house on goddamn fire.

They're inhuman.

(But they're also only human. Cause and effect. That's how it is. Something has caused them to behave this way, to _do this._ To _treat people like this_.)

His thought process is cut off though when the door opens and him getting the command to get up, it's time.

Iruka stands, mindful and like a well trained mute doll, tight lipped and a frown on his face - don't frown, smile, don't put such face, or you won't get your bonus, don't be displeasing or I'll have you taken care of, is what they say in hushed tones against his ear, under a curve of the sweetest smile - as he walks down the polished corridors towards the room where he is to perform.

He wonders if he shouldn't have had that congee earlier. Because Iruka is pretty sure he feels utterly disgusted and sick just thinking of the existence of this people, at how it might have been one of the younger jounins or chuunins, those who had been his former students that might have been wrapped in silk and bent into submission and used like an animal.

It bites him hard, the reality and realization.

And when he sees the group of people with power in high places who are supposed to die in a fortnight lounging in the L shaped arranged of the cushions under the open paper screen windows, when he sees the center where he is to perform, when he sees how _young_ the victim he is supposed to fuck and entertain his _targets_ with (so young, that she can't be barely fourteen!), Iruka feels his knees shake and his stomach go cold and his knuckles whiten.

But he smiles instead, kneels to the ground and holds his hand for the young girl to hold him in his embrace and gently peel the silk off her quivering frame.

(You try not to cry for her sake. You hide your pain behind a smile so gentle, even when you watch wide gray eyes water slightly, and painted crimson lips press against yours.

You try not to feel sick.

You try to be strong.

The mission always comes first, after all.)

Umino Iruka does _not_ exist.

(Cannot exist.)

But the chuunin shinobi, 011450, _does_.


End file.
